This summer season a gaggle of highschool college students introduced a complete new that means to overseas change applications.
Wendy Rojas of Koreatown immersed herself in Sioux Falls, S.D. Anticipating to see Mt. Rushmore, she as a substitute discovered herself setting the document straight about her hometown. No, she defined to locals, her neighborhood will not be overrun with gangs and rife with gunfire like they’d seen within the motion pictures.
Maggie Quine of Kilgore, Texas, was simply as shocked with what she needed to make clear to L.A. teenagers visiting her hometown. No, Texans don’t get round on horseback.
Though Rojas and Quine didn’t want a passport for his or her journeys, they could as nicely have traveled to a overseas land. In a novel program designed to interrupt down entrenched stereotypes and spark lasting friendships, the American Alternate Undertaking despatched 13 city L.A. teenagers to locations like rural Arkansas, Ohio and South Dakota whereas 10 college students from Texas, Pennsylvania and elsewhere arrived in Los Angeles.
“We’re attempting to create a form of antidote to prejudice by bringing collectively teams of younger people who find themselves very completely different from one another … politically, racially, ethnically, culturally, socioeconomically, and offering them with experiences that assist them humanize the opposite in order that they don’t demonize them later,” stated David McCullough III, the founding father of the group.
Lexa Smith of Warren, N.H., left, and Anna Gordon of Jackson, Miss., each 18, study Los Angeles Central Library throughout a tour of downtown Los Angeles as a part of the American Alternate Undertaking.
(Christina Home / Los Angeles Occasions)
The genesis of this system is rooted in a 2016 cross-country journey McCullough took as 22-year-old Yale scholar engaged on a analysis mission, interviewing college students and academics in impoverished areas. Within the throes of the polarizing 2016 Donald Trump vs. Hillary Clinton presidential race, McCullough stated he anticipated to face some animosity. He was cautious of the truth that folks from completely different elements of the nation won’t welcome a stranger — not to mention a white researcher from an elite East Coast establishment. What he discovered was a lot completely different.
In Cotulla, Texas, McCullough stated his host household supplied heat acceptance, taking him to church and giving him a tour of the city they had been proud to name house. He quickly met Kevin Coleman, a Texan who shared his love of cheeseburgers and Budweiser and so they shortly turned shut associates.
They linked previous their political variations, McCullough stated, as a result of they acquired to know one another as folks first.
“I care about Kevin as a result of I care about Kevin,” McCullough stated. “If there’s one factor that I realized from that, it’s that you will discover a few of your finest associates in some most unlikely locations — locations which might be completely different from your individual.”
Individuals within the American Alternate Undertaking, a home change program for graduating highschool seniors, meet for a downtown Los Angeles tour.
(Christina Home / Los Angeles Occasions)
He launched the American Alternate Undertaking in 2019 with a couple of thousand {dollars} in funding, linking highschool seniors from Albuquerque and Anchorage to Flowood, Miss., and Palo Alto, Calif. This 12 months, McCullough stated the nonprofit despatched its a thousandth scholar on change with funding from Kate Capshaw and Steven Spielberg’s Hearthland Basis and different contributors.
Downtown Magnets Excessive College is one in every of 54 excessive colleges taking part within the exchanges and the primary in Southern California. Rojas is one in every of 500 touring college students, the most important group but for this system. When she joined different mission college students and host households for pizza in Sioux Falls, she anticipated to be taught extra concerning the place she would name house for the following week.
As an alternative, she discovered herself confronting stereotypes when she described Sioux Falls as “quieter” than Koreatown.
“No extra gunshots proper?” one other host member of the family requested. “Perhaps we’ll shoot exterior your window to make you’re feeling at house,” they joked.
They continued, asking her about gangs and if she knew any gang members.
“I’ve by no means actually seen something,” Rojas instructed them, greatly surprised by the idea. “I did clarify to them typically you will note the gang markings on partitions however you don’t actually see a gaggle of men pulling up like within the motion pictures … that’s probably not actual.”
As an alternative, she defined, it’s the hustle and bustle of her apartment-dense neighborhood that makes Koreatown full of life — the chatter of neighbors, the honks of visitors and the occasional squealing of a avenue race — not gangs and gunshots.
Although shocked, Rojas dismissed the remark as a foul stereotype — one she had hopefully busted — and continued on along with her week attending to know college students who had been desirous about studying about her, not simply the place she was from.
Rojas stated she realized her friends needed to be engineers and docs, and she or he shared plans to review biotechnology at Cal Poly Pomona. Whereas they might suppose in a different way from her, all of them need to discover a option to contribute to the world, she stated.
Because the week got here to a detailed, Rojas discovered herself at a barbecue with the identical native host household. However this time, the dialog was completely different. They requested Rojas to inform them concerning the L.A. she is aware of, which gave her an opportunity to explain the completely different cultures she encounters each day. They discovered widespread floor within the close-knit nature of each their communities, she stated.
“We’ve our personal perceptions of various locations and completely different folks however I really feel like after we come collectively like this and we speak nose to nose, there may be all the time a connection,” Rojas stated. “Even when we disagree on possibly our political beliefs or no matter, we will discover one thing in widespread.”
Touchdown again in Los Angeles, Rojas joined fellow Downtown Magnets college students in welcoming 10 visiting college students for his or her first meal collectively. As they sat round a desk stuffed with strangers, it was the L.A. college students who had been first to interrupt the silence, sharing tales of their very own exchanges and desperate to be taught concerning the hometowns of their friends.
The preliminary nerves calmed all through the week as the scholars visited Griffith Park Observatory, sampled Grand Central Market eateries and acquired misplaced in a sea of blue at a Dodgers sport.
Axel Ruiz, 17, of Los Angeles, a participant within the American Alternate Undertaking, meets with teenagers from exterior California as a part of an change program. Ruiz lately traveled to Little Rock, Ark., as a part of this system.
(Christina Home / Los Angeles Occasions)
Evelyn Moctezuma of Scranton, Pa., acquired to see the ocean for the primary time. Da’Kenzi Robinson of Paris, Texas, efficiently rode the Metro. And Quine felt she might be anybody she needed to be in a metropolis the place nobody appeared to guage and even take note of her, a stark distinction to her hometown the place everybody is aware of everybody else’s enterprise.
By week’s finish, it appeared just like the group might speak about something — politics, race, their shared love of Spongebob, Robinson stated.
“When Joe Biden had posted that he was resigning, we had been on the Metro after which all of us simply began speaking about it,” Robinson stated. “You wouldn’t suppose that you can simply have an everyday dialog about that nevertheless it felt good to not must be on a facet.”
These are the sorts of experiences that may change the best way college students take into consideration others who maintain completely different views, McCullough stated. And alongside the best way, he added, he hoped that they’d make some associates, identical to he did.
“We’re defining folks by fractions of who they’re … we’re pretending that as a result of we all know one in every of their views, we all know all of their views, which may be very not often true,” McCullough stated. “The journey had me recognize the complexity of all folks and taught me methods to navigate nuance — introduced a world that’s under no circumstances black and white very a lot into shade — and that’s what we’re attempting to do for these children.”
McCullough added that he plans to proceed increasing the mission till a senior change is as commonplace as senior promenade in hopes of constructing a “extra linked nation.”
College students from all through the nation tour the Los Angeles Central Library as a part of the American Alternate Undertaking.
(Christina Home / Los Angeles Occasions)
